The ammeter is woefully inadequate for knowing if the charging system is functioning properly. There is a reason why they disappeared from autos long ago.

Not even close to accurate or correct.

Let's hear your technical explanation.

With 34 posts since 2008 You first ?? While I may not always agree with SC, He has tried to help many and is correct in his statement.

My post history might tell you more than is readily obvious. If your observation was meant to question my motive, suit yourself.

My response did not condemn his.

When you fire up your 60s-early 70s Mopar and let it idle, what exactly do you really know when you look at the ammeter?

The charging system attempts to maintain a specific voltage. On newer vehicles battery temp and other things are factored into that. When you look at your ammeter, do you have any idea if the charging system is actually doing what it supposed to be doing?

I could cite personal experience with faulty systems where an ammeter provided little/no or incorrect indicators as to the actual problem. A voltmeter could and did provide the answer.

Perhaps if I had qualified my first sentence by saying "given a choice between only an ammeter or a voltmeter" my point might have been seen differently. Or not.

A volt meter will tell you what your voltage is now. Does it tell you if your generator/alternator is actually charging or if a belt has failed or must you wait to see a steadily decline battery voltage? I have no volt meters so am uncertain.

A amp gauge should tell you moment by moment that it is charging or discharging and at what rate this occurring.

However given the choice if for no other reason than electrical and fire safety, I would choose a volt meter if I could only have one.

I do know. And since I know it, took the time to writte up the thread I wrotte, to explain to everybody.

Neither of the gauges ( voltimeter or ammeter) are perfect. You can get a short on alt and get 18 even 24 volts coming out from the charging system, and the ammeter could show a discharge. It happened to me once! The thuth was it was discharging, not overcharging even the high voltage reading... sooo.... what it was wrong? The ammeter or the voltimeter? Of course both told me there was something wrong, but the fact was it was discharging ( I disconnected the batt and engine stalled ), so the ammeter was telling me the truth not the voltimeter.

If you want a voltimeter, go ahead, but I just try to post a true information, not false. Once you understand how it works will be up to you what do you preffer, but don't take decisions down a false information or unkowledgement of the system.

Myself, and since my car came out from fact with ammeter, I like to keep it like it was from factory. That's what it calls a RESTORATION. Aaaand since IS POSIBLE to make it safe, then decided to keep it. I love my ammeter in working order showing me the charging system status, and not a propportional mirrow reading of the charge system with a voltimeter.

The charge system is about amperes and not volts, so I preffer to read the amperes what is actually what is all about coming and going.

On the original poster issue in fact it could get allways a nice voltage reading, since voltage is able to go through a hair if needed ( untill some noticeable load is requested when it could show a voltage decay as far the path creates the restriction ) but the bad conditions terminals at bulkhead wouldn't allow ( as in fact wasn't allowing ) to source a nice path to the load ( amperes ) required at main splice. The main splice is on the opposite side of the ammeter to the batt hence the discharging reading, being sucked out to feed this splice, because the alt source was being restricted

If you could actually understand the technical explanation you would not need it because you would not have made your statement.